


On Companionship

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Episode: s12e05 Fugitive of the Judoon, Shenanigans, the doctor pretending to be a companion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23432413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: The Doctor scrunches her nose in distaste. “Yes, well, I’m not very bright. Not a doctor or anything, am I? Not like you.”She leans pointedly into the pronoun, shoving her hands into the pockets of her trousers as she circles the room. It’s been a long time since she’s seen this desktop setting in action. Of course, she hasn’t really been at liberty to choose them, lately. Something explodes, the TARDIS kicks her out, and once they find their way back to each other, the ship has redecorated. Sometimes she likes it. Sometimes she doesn’t. Bit of a toss-up, really, however, she can safely say she doesn’t miss this particular interior. It’s dated in a manner that hasn’t yet managed to circle back to retro and very, very space age.“I’m not a doctor. Not in the human way, anyway, and for someone who claims to not be very bright, you were pretty handy back there.”After being swept away by an unfamiliar past version of herself, the 13th Doctor decides to go with the flow and play companion for a while.
Relationships: The Doctor | Ruth Clayton & Thirteenth Doctor
Comments: 26
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

The Doctor shouldn’t be here.    
  
Technically speaking, it shouldn’t be  _ physically possible _ for her to be here. If Ruth is who she says she is -- if she is also “the Doctor” (whatever that title means these days) -- then they shouldn’t be able to touch without ripping the universe apart. It’s basic Blinovitch Refutation Effect, and covers all the first rules that time travelers are taught before they’re given access to the technology: don’t redo something you’ve already done, don’t make contact with your past self. The damage should have already been done. Ruth grabbed her hand and swept her away and somehow, nothing had happened. There was no discharge of energy, no sudden end to the universe, no seepage of time, just an endless stream of confusion.    


Despite every muscle of her body screaming that it would be best for everyone if she high-tailed it back to her own TARDIS as soon as possible, her curiosity begs her to stay. The fam will be fine. They’re a quick hop on the train away from their homes; she can go back and collect them when she’s done here.    
  
“Who’re you really?” Ruth asks, peering over those horrible, yellow-tinted glasses at the Doctor.   
  
“I’m --” It takes the Doctor a minute, eyes sweeping both the console room and her memory for inspiration. She’s always been rubbish at fake names, and the old standby doesn’t really suit her present state. “I’m --”    
  
_ Oh _ , she needs a name that doesn’t hurt. She’s spent too long loving and losing women, and the list of off-limits names is longer than most books. Grace looms large in her mind’s eye -- the first face that this face saw -- and despite the Doctor’s best efforts to chase her away, she lingers. In the end, she compromises, twisting Grace’s name towards its nearest neighbor. “Faith. I’m Faith.” 

“Took you awhile to get to that, didn’t it?”  
  
The Doctor scrunches her nose in distaste. “Yes, well, I’m not very bright. Not a doctor or anything, am I? Not like _you_.”   
  
She leans pointedly into the pronoun, shoving her hands into the pockets of her trousers as she circles the room. It’s been a long time since she’s seen this desktop setting in action. Of course, she hasn’t really been at liberty to choose them, lately. Something explodes, the TARDIS kicks her out, and once they find their way back to each other, the ship has redecorated. Sometimes she likes it. Sometimes she doesn’t. Bit of a toss-up, really, however, she can safely say she doesn’t miss this particular interior. It’s dated in a manner that hasn’t yet managed to circle back to retro and very, _very_ space age.   
  
“I’m not a doctor. Not in the human way, anyway, and for someone who claims to not be very bright, you were pretty handy back there.”   
  
Ruth’s gaze roams down towards the console as she jabs at a button that the Doctor is ninety-nine percent sure doesn’t have any actual purpose. River once rolled her eyes at her for using it, which was usually a good sign that she was doing something wrong. Not that it really matters. Unless she’s being _exceptionally_ petty, the TARDIS flies herself most of the time.   
  
“Yes, well, _smart_ and _good in a crisis_ are hardly synonymous, are they? They’re two separate circles of a Venn Diagram with a tiny sliver of overlap in the middle. I don’t usually manage to hit that balance. Not to oversell myself, but I’m really, really good at picking the stupid option over the smart one. Still works, most of the time.” The Doctor’s voice trails off, and she reaches out a gentle hand to trace over one of the inset circles in the wall. She never figured out what those circles were for. They’re too skinny to be decent shelving, and if they’re windows, then they only succeed in providing an absolutely stunning view of the wall.   
  
The TARDIS hums in response to her touch, and she quickly withdraws, shoving her hand back into her pocket. “ _Stop_ _it_ ,” she hisses under her breath, careful to keep the sound quiet enough that Ruth won’t be able to hear. The Doctor won’t be able to learn anything if the TARDIS threatens to blow her cover every time she dares to run a finger over a surface.   
  
“I think she likes you,” Ruth says from across the room.   
  
The Doctor whirls around, grey coattails flying, twin hearts frantically beating their alarm. “I’m sorry, what?”   
  
“The TARDIS. I think she likes you. I can’t remember the last time she was this reactive to a new person. You got a thing for ships?” Ruth’s yellow-tinted gaze fixes upon her again, tone dancing with slight amusement, the way one would talk to a stray dog that’s wandered into their yard. The Doctor bristles. She doesn’t think that she talks to her fam like that, or at least, she tries not to talk to her fam like that. It reminds her too much of the way that she was spoken to during her time at the Academy, as if she was so much less capable than her far superior peers.   


The Doctor ignores the query about her ‘thing for ships’ and chooses to latch onto the other piece of information instead. If she can get a name out of Ruth, if it’s a name that she knows, then maybe she’ll be able to pinpoint what part of her timeline went awry. “Do you bring a lot of people on board?”   
  
“Sometimes, if I like them.” A knowing smile curls across Ruth’s face.    
  
“Anyone I’d know?” The Doctor asks, pressing a bit harder. Though she likes investigating mysteries, and sometimes gets a good kick out of a harmless conspiracy, she isn’t a particularly subtle detective. She’s never been subtle at anything, really. People who have made the mistake of walking around with a piece of celery shoved into their lapel for well over a century don’t tend to be delicate creatures.    
  
Ruth scoffs. “You a social butterfly or something?”   
  
“Been around a bit. Met a lot of people. Seen a lot of things. Never know when paths might cross.” The Doctor shoves her hands into her pockets as she returns to her idle circle of the console room, careful to look but not  _ touch _ .    
  
Her mind races through a thousand possible ideas, frantically connecting the dots as she attempts to construct a possible backstory. She won’t be able to keep this charade up for very long if she pretends as though she’s never time-traveled. It’s sheer luck that Ruth hasn’t scanned her yet and picked up on both the artron energy and the twin hearts, or just the usual obliviousness. She can’t really talk. She never bothered to scan O in Australia.    
  
“Did a bit of a tenure as a Time Agent. That’s where I picked this up.” She pulls her sonic from the inside pocket of her coat and flips it into the air, intending to catch it. She misses, and it clatters to the floor. “Love a multitool,” she says as she scrambles to fetch it again.   
  
Ruth’s disapproving judgement is tangible. “Never cared for Time Agents. Hopefully you’re an exception.”    
  
It’s not a surprising response. Time Lords are trained to hate the Time Agency and vortex manipulators and any member of an inferior species who deigns to fiddle with time. It took her centuries to shake that bias, and even then, she still finds herself slipping back into it. Doesn’t help that every so often, she runs into a time traveler who’s the worst kind of garbage. “Never did either, if I’m honest. Ran into one who almost changed my mind, but he was a bit rogue. Immortal, y’know. Immortals never follow the rules.”    
  
“Not fond of immortals, either.”    
  
The familiar sensation of self-loathing sinks into her skin, and the Doctor wrinkles her nose. “Figured you'd say that. Are you fond of anything, or do you just sit up here in your spaceship and get annoyed by the masses? Sounds a bit dull, doesn’t it?”    
  
Silence burns between them, and Ruth finally walks over to the opposite side of the controls and enters a set of coordinates. The TARDIS engines groan and wheeze as the ship materializes, and Ruth crosses the space between them, extending a hand towards the Doctor with a smug smile set into her face.    
  
With bated breath, the Doctor takes it. If the universe did not end before, it seems unlikely that it will end now, but she cannot keep her deeply ingrained fear from pressing in on either side.    
  
Nothing happens. The touch is terrifyingly mundane.   
  
Still smiling, Ruth tugs the Doctor in the direction of whatever unknown lies beyond those familiar doors. “Wait till you see this.”


	2. Chapter 2

Though she apparently shares her mind — if not her history — with the Time Lord who entered the coordinates into the TARDIS computer, the Doctor isn’t entirely sure what she expects to encounter outside of those doors. Her mind fills only with the orange light and soaring domes of home, drawn like a moth to a flame to the thought of the one place that she will never be able to see again in its proper glory. She is a romantic at hearts, and she pines for the experiences that she once had with the people who are either long-lost or long dead, and she depends on the awe and wonder of humans upon which to hang the lingering remnants of her own hope.  
  
A crisp breeze washes against the Doctor’s skin, and the scent of salt fills her nostrils. A beach. Not a place she would have taken a traveler she was trying to impress. She would have taken them somewhere much grander -- the birth of a star or the dying moments of an entire planet. This could almost pass for Earth, were it not for the fact that the sky that skims the top of the waves is full of swirling pinks and reds and lacks even the faintest hint of blue.   
  
Without thinking of how the action might look to her traveling companion, she loosens her grip on Ruth’s hand and bends down, taking a pinch of sand between her fingers and dropping it on her tongue. “Somewhere in the Centuri system. Boria? No. Too salty. Miren? It has to be Miren. Nothing else it could be. Not with that lack of carbon content and general bitterness. So how ‘bout it? Did I win?”   
  
She spins around as she stands, an earnest and expectant expression spreading across her features.   
  
Ruth, however, meets her with nothing approaching a matched sense of excitement, only an upper lip curled in mild disgust. “Is that a human habit? Eating dirt?”   
  
Worry flickers across the Doctor’s face as she shoves her hands into the pockets of her coat, futilely trying to pretend as if she had done nothing strange at all. “ _Nah_ ,” she leans into the word a bit too hard to be convincing as the toe of her boot nervously burrows into the ground. “Bit of a personal one. Got a very refined palate, me. Lightyears evolved past your usual 21st Century lot. Won the genetic lottery, as they say.”   
  
Ruth’s stare lingers, and the Doctor continues to fidget. She is terribly grateful that this version of her past self is opposed to carrying a sonic, otherwise she probably would have been bioanalyzed halfway to Sunday by now. If there’s one thing the Doctor can always rely on in any regeneration, it’s her constant inability to be appropriately thorough. She doesn’t even bother with environment checks half the time, just runs out of the TARDIS doors and desperately hopes she can breathe. In light of these recent events, however, maybe she should give her friends a quick scan whenever they reconvene, just to make sure they’re not hiding any secrets. It’s not that she doesn’t trust them, but it’s probably a good idea to start building healthy habits before she finds herself in another O-has-secretly-been-the-Master-all-along situation. It’s in everyone’s best interests to try to be a touch more vigilant. Maybe. If she remembers. Hard to keep track of things when you have five racing brains and a couple millennia’s worth of memories. 

After a long moment, Ruth merely shrugs, the gesture barely perceptible beneath the austere cut of her jacket and the many, many layers that sit beneath it, none the least of which is the ruffled, multicolored monstrosity of a shirt that peeks out over the collar and at the wrists. The Doctor is more than willing to burn that thing at first opportunity, if only to save herself the embarrassment of having to remember it, if indeed, she ever remembers what it was like to be Ruth. 

Truth be told, she’s still a little unclear on the order of things. Ruth is younger than she is. Ruth claims to be the Doctor. According to the sneaky scan that the Doctor had done with her sonic when Ruth wasn’t looking, their biologies _do_ match, but there must be another explanation. She would _remember_ being Ruth. She would remember having a job. She would remember that TARDIS and Gat and all of it, but she has nothing. And on top of that, they are able to touch. They shouldn’t be able to do that. They must be distinct separate entities. Cloned, perhaps? Unformed and reformed maybe? Rebuilt from new cells with whatever parts of her consciousness were contained in the matrix? The Time Lords did that to the Master once in order to use him as a weapon of war, but the Master was aware of that. It wasn’t some big secret. Surely somebody would have told her — there would be a noticeable gap, something, _anything_ she could hang onto — but there’s nothing. Just a person who claims to be her and an endless fountain of confusion. 

“Anyway, was I right? The Doctor asks, masking her anxiety with a quick flick of her tongue over her lips and shoving her hands into her pockets. “Is this Miren?” 

“It is,” Ruth confirms with a quick nod. “Would be a bit more impressive if you’ve never been here before.”

The Doctor’s nose wrinkles. “Probably would stand to be a bit more impressive on its own, if I’m honest.” 

She can’t help but twist the knife, just a little bit. She’s a terribly irreverent person, all things considered. It’s part of what had driven the division between herself and the upper echelons of Gallifrey. She wonders if Ruth is also renegade. She would have to be, if she picked a name and has a job and is mucking about with chameleon arcs. People who have nothing to hide don’t tend to do the things that Ruth has done. 

“Are all time agents this ungrateful?” 

The Doctor shrugs. “People are varied creatures. Can’t go around slapping labels on a whole group like that. How would you like it if someone said that all Time Lords are selfish bastards?”

“I’d probably say that they were right.”

It’s hardly the answer that the Doctor expected to hear, but it echoes her current sentiments in a way that inadvertently draws her attention towards just how _cold_ she has felt in the wake of Gallifrey’s destruction. Her planet and her people are gone, and yet, she feels empty rather than devastated. She already spent centuries of her life mourning the death of Gallifrey, and though it’s surprising to have lost it again, the pain is no longer fresh. A creeping sense of deja vu keeps the grief from manifesting into something that feels entirely _real_ , which is why upon walking out those familiar wooden doors a moment ago, she dared to think that Ruth might have been taking her home.   
  
However, now is not the time to dwell on such things, and the Doctor pumps the brakes on that string of ideas before it spirals too far out of control, and with a quiet sniff, she raises a hand to blot away a small tear with the end of her sleeve. On the whole, existential crises are incredibly private affairs, and she does not plan to have one in front of a _familiar stranger_...o r _anyone else_ , for that matter.  After all, she’s been successfully hiding the truth from her fam ever since the Master first told her about it, and they're an _exceptionally_ clever and nosy lot. 

“Yes, well, that’s not the point, is it?” the Doctor says quickly, doubling back to cover both her tracks and her emotions.

The amusement that flits across Ruth’s face is so faint that it might very well be a product of the Doctor’s imagination — there and gone again in a flickering second.   
  
“Then make a better one,” she remarks as she turns, setting off towards some unknown location with long, measured strides.

The Doctor has to take two steps per each of Ruth’s in order to keep up, a struggle that’s marked in their contrasting footprints across the sand. “I’m not _ungrateful_ ,” she mutters angrily as she hurries along. “I'm just used to being in charge, is all.” 

She’s also used to _knowing_ things, yet here she is, being pulled along in the wake of a being who she can neither explain nor understand. It’s an enormously unsettling set of circumstances, and so far as she sees it, that’s enough to make _anyone_ a bit tetchy. It doesn’t make her _ungrateful_ or boring or any other number of horrible descriptors that a Time Lord might think to lob at a perceived ex-time agent. 

Without so much as beat of hesitation, Ruth responds, and though the Doctor’s ears manage to pick up the sound and the cadence of the sentence, the words don’t quite register in her mind. 

Instead, her senses are overwhelmed by a rush of light and a roar of sound and the sudden feeling that her entire body is being compressed. Panic rises in her chest, responding to the pain with slashing claws that fail to help. She’s felt this before, but not for a long time. No one uses this technology anymore. It’s dangerous and reckless and you have half a chance of killing your intended target instead of kidnapping them. 

There’s no way to fight it, and the Doctor knows that, but instinct still compels her to yell a hasty “Get down!” at Ruth as her own legs give way beneath her. 

She doesn’t know if the words even leave her lips — nonetheless manage to reach Ruth — before thought, light, and emotion give way to the dark, unforgiving silence of unconsciousness.


End file.
